Thought provoking commentary

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New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is lifted in the air by his teammates Logan Mankins (70) and Russ Hochstein, left, after Brady threw a 65-yard touchdown to Randy Moss in the third quarter of an NFL football game against the New York Giants at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on Saturday, Dec. 29, 2007. Brady broke the single-season record with his 50th touchdown pass and Moss broke the single season-record with his 23rd touchdown reception on the play.

By Sam Evans, Associated Pass Writer
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.

The numbers are in and the preliminary ratings indicate the 29 December 2007 game between the Patriots and Giants was the most watched broadcast in U.S. television history.

Up to this point, the most watched program in U.S. television history was the M*A*S*H series finale: “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” which aired in 50.15 million households on 28 February, 1983 with a 77% share of the entire viewing audience. The M*A*S*H broadcast had 105.9 million total viewers. Since 2000, the most watched program was Super Bowl XLI Indianapolis Colts vs. Chicago Bears), which had 93.1 million million viewers on 4 February, 2007 .

Overnight ratings of the Patriots-Giants game show 53.2 million households watched the game. In addition, Nielsen Media Research is reporting overnight viewers totaled more than 107.3 million on the three networks broadcasting the game (NFL Network, NBC, CBS) and an 83% share of the total television viewing audience.

After weeks of insisting they wouldn’t cave in, NFL officials did just that Wednesday. As a result, all of America saw the Patriots’ make history. Saturday night’s game between New England and the New York Giants on the NFL Network, was also simulcast nationwide on CBS and NBC. It was the first time in NFL history the same game was broadcast on three separate networks at the same time.

The game itself also set several NFL records. Tom Brady and Randy Moss set single-season records for touchdown passes and TD catches, respectively, Saturday night when the New England Patriots stars combined on a 65-yard scoring pass play in the fourth quarter.

The play gave Brady 50 TD passes for the season, breaking Peyton Manning’s 2004 record of 49. Moss now has 23 catches, breaking the mark of Jerry Rice, who did it in 12 games during a strike-marred 1987 season.

The play and subsequent two-point conversion gave the Patriots a 31-28 fourth-quarter lead over the New York Giants and a record 582 points for the season. The old mark was 556 by the 1998 Vikings.

Brady and Moss earlier combined on a 4-yard touchdown pass. On the second one, Brady ran past safety James Butler, who seemed to reinjure a hamstring on the play. Moss caught the ball and trotted into the end zone. The New England Patriots finished the regular season 16-0 with a 38-35 win in East Rutherford, N.J.

Do you have any other ideas on how to spend $611 billion – or comparisons for what that money could have bought? Please leave your comments.

If the Bush administration succeeds in its latest request for funding for the war in Iraq, the total cost would rise to $611.5 billion, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonprofit research group.

The amount got me wondering: What would $611 billion buy?

Nearly 4,000 Newton North High Schools
Tagged as the most expensive high school in Massachusetts, at $154.6 million, the construction design for the new Newton North High School could be replicated almost 4,000 times using the money spent on the war.

40 Big Digs

At almost $15 billion, Boston’s Central Artery project has been held up as the nation’s most expensive public works project. Now multiply that by 40 and you’re getting close to US taxpayers’ commitment to democracy in Iraq – so far.

Almost 18 months’ worth of free gas for everyone
US drivers consume approximately 384.7 million gallons of gasoline a day. Retail prices averaged $3.00 a gallon in early November. Breaking it down, $611 billion could buy gasoline for everybody in the United States, for about 530 days.

Many, many environment-friendly cars on the road

With $611 billion, you could convert all cars in America to run on ethanol nine times over.

TheBudgetGraph.com estimates that converting the 136,568,083 registered cars in the United States to ethanol (conversion kits at $500) would cost $68.2 billion.

Nearly 14 million years’ worth of tuition, room, and board at Harvard
At published rates for this year, $611 billion translates into almost 14 million free rides for a year at Harvard University.

Tuition and fees at the University of Massachusetts-Boston could be paid for over 53 million years.

More than a year’s worth of Medicare benefits for everyone

In fiscal 2008, Medicare benefits will total $454 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation summary. The $611 billion in war costs is 17 times the amount vetoed by the president for a $35 billion health benefit program for poor children.

A looong contract for Dice-K

The Red Sox and Daisuke Matsuzaka agreed on a six-year, $52 million contract. The war cost could be enough to have Dice-K mania for more than 70,000-some years at this year’s rate.

A real war on poverty
According to World Bank estimates, $54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015, while $30 billion would provide a year of primary education for every child on earth.

At the upper range of those estimates, the $611 billion cost of the war could have fed and educated the world’s poor for seven years.

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The NFL may have concluded that the Indianapolis Colts weren’t cheating against the New England Patriots on Sunday, but one of their own security guards is telling a different story according to WBZ-TV in Boston.

A day after some unusual sounds were heard during the Colts-Patriots broadcast Sunday, the NFL issued a statement saying what sounded like simulated crowd noise at the RCA Dome was actually created by the CBS production crew, not the Colts.

“He said, ‘I don’t know if you know this, but they actually pick up the crowd noise and pump it back through the P.A. (public address system)'”. “So I guess in a round about way you could call it cheating”. He went on to say Colts management (to include Head Coach Tony Dungy) is aware of this violation of NFL rules but have decided that their interpretation of the “noise enhancement” rule is “no big deal”.

A NFL spokesman speaking on the condition of anonymity said the penalty for violating the league’s “noise enhancement” rule can be anything from a fine or loss of a draft pick to forfeiture of the game. He went on to say “Well, I guess the game forfeiture part won’t happen since, well, we know how the game turned out”.

Indianapolis Colt team ownership and Head Coach Tony Dungy refused to comment when asked about the allegations at the Tuesday team press conference.

Watch the video and decide for yourself. Feel free to leave your comments.

The NFL is investigating the the Indianapolis Colts for cheating during Sunday’s 24-20 loss to the New England Patriots.

On the first play of the fourth quarter, a 14-yard pass from Tom Brady to Randy Moss, the crowd noise is heard before and during the play, then immediately cuts out when Moss is tackled. In addition, there appeared to be a vibration in the sound while the crowd was cheering.

A published report on yahoo.com said Patriots president Jonathan Kraft complained to NFL vice president of security Milt Ahlerich afterward. Kraft is the son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Any enhancement of crowd noise would violate NFL rules, and Patriots spokesman Stacey James denied the team either filed or intended to file a formal complaint with the league.

It’s not the first time Indianapolis has been accused of such tactics. The Pittsburgh Steelers complained about the same thing after a 26-7 loss at the dome in November 2005. Since then, other teams have informally contended there is artificial noise pumped into the dome.

The Colts have continually denied the accusations, and issued their strongest worded statement yet on Monday.

“We trust this will put an end to the ridiculous and unfounded accusations that the Colts artificially enhanced crowd noise at the RCA Dome in any way,” the team said.

The latest accusations add yet another chapter to this already heated rivalry.

The much-anticipated game between the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts earned the highest overnight rating for a Sunday afternoon regular-season game in at least 20 years.

The matchup of two undefeated teams drew a 22.5 rating and 39 share on CBS in the nation’s largest markets. That is the highest overnight rating since 1987, which is as far back as the network’s records go.

The previous high was a 22.2/41 for Dallas-San Francisco on Nov. 10, 1996, a meeting of the winners of the previous four Super Bowls. The Cowboys won 20-17 in overtime.

The Patriots’ come-from-behind 24-20 victory attracted higher ratings than all four of last season’s NFL divisional playoff games.

Picture the ending of the Stanford-California game in 1982, without the band and with three times as many laterals.

Trinity University used 15 laterals after a completed pass on the final play of the game for an unlikely touchdown and 28-24 victory Saturday at stunned Millsaps. Call it the “Mississippi Miracle” for the Tigers, an NCAA Division III team in San Antonio.

“Things have to go perfectly for that to work,” coach Steve Mohr told The Associated Press after the Tigers got home Sunday night from Jackson, Miss. “We couldn’t do that against air if we tried.”

There were 2 seconds left, only enough time to snap the ball once, when Trinity (7-1) took over at its own 40.

Blake Barmore dumped a short pass over the middle to a wide-open Shawn Thompson, who gained 16 yards before he ran into a defender and made the first pitch to Riley Curry. Then there was another lateral, and another and another.

Curry got the ball four times, the last after it was bounced off the turf into his hands around the 34 and he sprinted to the end zone. He crossed the goal line 62 seconds after the ball was snapped.

That bounce was the only time the ball touched the ground, and Mohr thinks that actually helped the Tigers.

“Some of the Millsaps players stopped. That created the seam for Curry,” said Mohr, figuring some of the exhausted defenders might have thought it was like an incomplete pass to kill the play. “It was never batted, never touched the ground except the last throw, 14 straight completions.”

California needed only five laterals on its game-ending kickoff return for a touchdown in 1982, when Stanford’s band had stormed the field thinking the game was over.

Seven different Trinity players touched the ball, including two offensive linemen. Josh Hooten, a 266-pound guard, got it twice.

Hooten was the recipient of the second pitch, then threw the ball over his shoulder. Luckily, it went to receiver Michael Tomlin.

“He caught it and pitched it over his head blindly,” Mohr said. “It was like he caught it and thought he’s not supposed to have it. It was comical.”

The third touch by Curry ended when he pitched back to Tomlin and then Curry wound up on the ground after being tackled. Tomlin ran toward the sideline and got rid of the ball as he went down in a crowd, throwing to Hooten, who quickly pitched to Brandon Maddux.

With defenders surrounding him, Maddux desperately pitched the ball back toward the middle of the field. It took a perfect hop to Curry, who had gotten back to his feet.

“The worst part about it is we had five or six guys just quit on the play,” Millsaps coach Mike DuBose, the former Alabama coach, told The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger. “That type of thing just shouldn’t happen. Sure, we were tired. But so was Trinity. You have to finish the play. We stopped.”

Trinity cut it to 24-22 when Barmore threw a 13-yard TD pass to Curry with 2:11 left. But Barmore threw an incompletion on the 2-point conversion try and Millsaps recovered the attempted onside kick.

But the Majors (6-2) gave the ball back after failing to convert on fourth-and-2.

With the victory, Trinity remained in contention for the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference title and an automatic berth into the NCAA Division III playoffs. Millsaps would have clinched the playoff spot by winning.

“This puts us in position to play for something in November,” said Mohr, 143-53 in his 18 seasons at Trinity. “It doesn’t guarantee anything. Our kids understand it, but at least it kept us in the hunt.”

BOSTON — When Marty Rodweller uses a $2,000 windfall to either remodel her bathroom or take a trip to Ireland next spring, she’ll be thanking the Boston Red Sox.

The 53-year-old academic counselor from Danvers, Mass., is among several thousand Red Sox fans who are cashing in on a promotion run by a furniture store that offered full rebates if Boston won the World Series.

The four-store Jordan’s Furniture chain promised free sofas, chairs, dining tables and beds to customers who bought between March 7 and April 16 if the Red Sox won the championship. About 30,000 orders were taken during the promotion.

CEO Eliot Tatelman hasn’t disclosed how much the rebates would total, but he won’t have to pay it all. He bought an insurance policy to cover the losses.

Rodweller decided to go to bed before Game 4 ended and the Red Sox clinched. When she couldn’t sleep, she returned to watch the game’s final hour-and-a-half.

She didn’t have trouble nodding off the second time, though. “Because they won, I slept like a baby,” she said.

Rodweller said she bought the bed because she needed it, not out of any premonition that the Red Sox would win it all for the second time in four years. But because of the Jordan’s promotion, “I followed the team more closely than I usually do,” she said.